Senators Nick Minchin and Helen Coonan today opened fire
in the Senate on communications minister Stephen Conroy in a joint
attack marking the commencement of Minchin's term as shadow
minister.

Stephen Conroy(Credit: Conroy's office)

Referring to an article by business commentator Alan Kohler,
Minchin questioned Conroy on whether he had sought advice from his
department on whether wireless broadband speeds could exceed
fibre-optic speeds within two years, and what the impact could be
on the government's planned $4.7 billion national broadband
network (NBN).

"Could the minister make an attempt at crafting an answer that
has at least some relevance to the question," asked Minchin,
according to Hansard records sent to ZDNet.com.au this afternoon by
Conroy's office.

Noting it was "almost" the first Senate question he had to
answer as communications minister (former Shadow Minister Bruce
Billson is a member of the House of Representatives), Conroy said
ABS statistics released this week demonstrated Australian consumers
wanted faster broadband connections.

"That is why the Rudd Government has committed up to $4.7
billion and will consider regulatory changes to facilitate the
roll-out of the national broadband network that will boost
Australia's productivity," he said, referring to notes from his
laptop.

However, a number of senators immediately called a point of order
on Conroy, pointing out senators were not allowed to read speeches
in response to questions.

"Most if not all of us use a combination of referring to notes
and also making extemporaneous comments," said Coonan. "The point
here is that Senator Conroy, consistently for many months now, has
in every question time read verbatim from an electronic document
holder."

New Shadow CommunicationsMinister Nick Minchin(Credit: AUSPIC)

Senator Conroy responded by saying it was "embarrassing" that the
opposition call the communications minister to order for using a
laptop rather than paper notes.

"Unless wireless technologies have suddenly become faster than
the speed of light: the question is an embarrassing nonsense," he
said, highlighting the fact that former Howard ministers and
National Party senators had labelled fibre-optic cable as the best
option for future broadband in Australia.

In response to further questioning, Conroy had this to say about
wireless broadband:

"It does not actually fly through the air all the way from
computer to computer. This may come as a shock to you, Senator
Minchin. What actually happens is that it gets as close as it can
to its destination, gets sucked down into the ground, and guess
how it travels once it goes underground? Via a fibre-optic
cable!"